Items of food are contained within a variety of packages or containers in order to enable an individual to store the food item prior to consumption. These containers can hold a variety of types of food items, but in order to be consumable, the food products must be held within the container in a consumable state or must be converted to a consumable state.
For those types of food items that need to be converted into a consumable state, a number of food containers have been designed which incorporate heating or cooling mechanisms in order to prepare the contents of the container for consumption directly within the container. One example of such a container is disclosed in co-owned and co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/195,118, which is incorporated herein in its entirety, in which a heating or cooling mechanism is disposed within a plastic pouch. The food product is added to the pouch around the heating or cooling mechanism, and the mechanism is subsequently activated to heat or cool the food product to the desired consumable state.
However, when utilizing containers of this type, it is often difficult to determine the temperature of the food item within the container as it is being heated or cooled. As a result, the individual consuming the item may inadvertently allow the food item to become too hot or cold for consumption.
To remedy this problem, a number of self-heating or self-cooling containers have been designed to include thermometers capable of indicating the temperature of the food item within the container. However, these thermometers often do not accurately reflect the temperature of the food item within the container due to the placement of the thermometer on the container. Further, the configurations and/or constructions of these thermometers, such as thermochromic strips, often cannot readily provide accurate, precise and easily readable measurements with regard to the temperature of the food item in these containers.
Therefore, it is desirable to develop a thermometer that can be employed with a self-heating or self-cooling food product container, among other uses, that is capable of accurately measuring the temperature of a food item within the container in a manner that is easily readable by an individual.